I was meaning to write about sexuality for bloody ages, but never got round to it because I had too much to say. Then I hit on the genius idea of splitting it into instalments.
I made a rash promise at one point. I said I'd write one piece every week. Ha. That was clearly nonsense. It'll happen sporadically. That's the only pledge I'm qualified to make.
Part 1 - The Day I Decided To Become A LesbianPart 2 - The Dyke Years------------------------------------------------
Part 1 - The Day I Decided To Become A LesbianWhen I was 16, I decided to become a lesbian. Yes, I said
decided.
In the late eighties, there was a big campaign against Clause 28. One of the many affronts in this nasty piece of homophobia, was the idea that teachers should not "promote" homosexuality to British schoolchildren. The argument went that some poor young people might be taught how to be gay. Maybe they would be
converted into perverts! Heavens, what a thought.
But there was a counter-argument, and it went like this: Nobody could be
made gay. You either were or you weren't.
I wasn't happy with this. Quite apart from the what’s-so-awful-about-kids-being-gay aspect of it all...
...you could, if you wanted to, say that I personally was "converted" to lesbianism. By various filthy radicals. Or, at the very least, encouraged. And very glad I am too, because it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
When I was 13, I was sitting on a table with my best friend. It was an art lesson. We'd been instructed (by Mr Brudenell, who was a top lost-it if ever I met one, but more on him another time) to look at a book full of art. It was spread across our laps, and as we leaned over it... our knees touched. And my instant response was one of those adolescent groin twinges.
"Oooh," I thought. "Now there's a thing."
Then I shrugged, and with an "Oh well, I guess I'm bisexual"... thought no more of it.
Three years later, I was 16, and I Fell In Love, and it was all marvellous. He was 21, which made him a
proper man, and he. loved. me.
Wow.
I lived in a state of floaty bliss until the thorny subject of sex was raised. Oh, well, thinking about it, I was blissful for quite a while
afterwards, as well. I would spend weekends in his student house in Sheffield, and I would get orgasms! From someone else's hand! Not my own! Brilliant.
The problem was, it was all a bit one-sided. What with me being 16, and timid, and not having a clue, and all that. I kept thinking I probably
ought to try and touch him, but it was all just a bit too much. Who knows how the hell he was satisfying himself. I expect he spent a lot of time in the loo. Until the day he lost his patience and announced that Tonight Was The Night. He went hunting through the house for condoms, and I lay still and tried to stop shaking.
I was terrified.
To cut a long story short, I suffered from
vaginismus. Not that I had the slightest idea. He thought it was a lingering hymen, and I (despite having used tampons for years) assumed he was right. It was all a bit awful - and painful - for a couple of months, and then we split up.
The next boyfriend was much less reticent, but I refused to do anything until I'd seen the doctor about my biological chastity belt. My GP was wonderful, very patient and understanding, and he explained about muscles going into spasm. He suggested I take it slowly, relax, not do anything I didn't want to do.
So I did.
It was all a bit of an anticlimax. Boring, in fact. He came, he fell asleep within seconds, he snored, he spread out like a star in the single bed in the dingy little student terrace... and I clung to the edge of the mattress, trying not to fall out and wondering whether it would be rude to go to the bathroom and wipe myself.
I was lying like this one morning, watching the sun rise, and thinking, "This is crap. If only I was a lesbian. Then I'd know what to do, and she'd know what to do, and there'd be none of this snoring."
My bloke's flatmate had "slept with a few girls," as she'd told me a few nights previously. If only I could be like her, picking and choosing, trying things out. And the gay bloke who lived over the road and worked with my mate Bev at Pizza Hut... he told her he thought my boyfriend was a homosexual. And that it would do me good "to go out with a few girls."
"Nah," I thought. "If I was a lesbian I'd have to come out, and deal with the prejudice."
We were all in the SWP, and that weekend there was a "Reclaim The Night" march. The radical feminists didn't like the SWP (people like me were honorary men, apparently), so me and Kate stuck together.
Kate was in the SWP too, and Kate was a lesbian. She was short and cute and wore big boots. I loved those boots. But she was 19, and a student, and cool. I was just a silly little schoolgirl. So I was very flattered when she invited me round to her mate's house after the demo. He was hosting some kind of event, which involved people sitting on his living room floor and watching the Stonewall video.
Kate and I sat in a corner, on a beanbag. She stroked my hand, I think. I was amazed, and delighted. The next thing I knew we were walking down Gillygate, snogging. In public!
Gillygate is right in the centre of York, which is quite a small place. It was a Friday night. There was every chance we might bump into someone I knew. And I DIDN'T CARE.
I felt absolutely brilliant, and of course fell head over heels in love. We spent the night in her listed and listing student house, and arranged to meet up the following night, to watch Revolution with Al Pacino at the student film club.
Mr Pacino was in the film. He wasn't playing gooseberry on our date.
I spent the day staring dreamily into space at my library job, then ran round to all my friends' houses to tell them that I WAS A LESBIAN!
I arrived later in the student snack bar, nervous but bursting with anticipation. I'll never forget my first sight of her that evening. She was leaning back on a chair, with her DMs propped on a table. Looking hard and soft, cute and sassy, mouth-wateringly gorgeous.
She finished with me within five minutes of my arrival - something about me being too young, I think.
I cried all the way through the film.
But my mind was made up. I was a lesbian.
------------------------------------------------
Part 2 - The Dyke YearsI was a lesbian, but my defining lesbian love, my catalyst, the first woman I ever slept with...
Kate had dumped me within 24 hours of inviting me into her bed.
And we hadn’t even shagged. She was a bit coy, and I was terrified (still 16, still scared of sex), and I thought it was... well... sweet.
So what next? I didn’t have a clue. I just knew that everything seemed suddenly to have slotted into place. Because penetrative sex did nothing for me. Because it was obvious that men and women were crap at communicating with each other, or treating each other well. Because lesbianism was exciting, and taboo, and rebellious. And yes, of course I fancied women.
It was a relief to stop having to worry about blokes, and their dicks (which I could finally admit to finding at best distasteful, at worst positively disturbing). And this whole world opened up, of people who got all carnal with those they
really weren’t supposed to.
After Kate, my first big lesbian love was Dev. Short for Devious. Pronounced Deev. Dev was a friend of Kate, who had apparently rung her in a fit of remorse, asking her to, well, take me under her wing I suppose. So Dev rang me.
I was delighted. I knew who Dev was. Coincidentally she was also very short, wore big DM boots, and was a 19-yr-old heart-melting mix of soft and hard. Oh, I did love her ever-so. She wore a trilby, a trenchcoat, too-long chinos and a shapeless old-man brown cardigan. She had the cutest smile in the world. She lived in a ramshackle student house, with clowns and performance artists. There were stilts in the hall. The kitchen smelt of herbs and spices. She gave me
Rubyfruit Jungle to read, and pfeffernüsse to eat. I loved her. I have a plan one day to write a whole series of posts about people I’ve fallen in love with. I’ll do her justice then.
Dev introduced me to her little circle of gay friends, and between them they adopted the funny little socialist lesbian schoolgirl. No, Dev never fancied me back. But I didn't expect her to. I was a silly kid who hadn’t even come out to her schoolfriends. I wasn’t worthy.
That was a year of sitting on windowsills with feet swinging down over Fulford Cemetery, eating German biscuits from the Heslington Rd delicatessen, reading all the Mapp and Lucia books and discussing them endlessly, lusting over Harriet someone-or-other who played the maybe-lesbian detective in a Dorothy L Sayers TV adaptation, and
keeping those eyes on Martina’s thighs.
And then I was 17, and I came out to my parents.
I’d been away to a Marxism conference in London. In those days all the best lesbians were wearing black triangles. Because the Nazis had, supposedly, maybe, made lesbians wear them in Germany. So we all wore them. Nobody except a handful of dykes had the faintest clue what they were supposed to signify, but what the hell. The blokes had pink triangles, we had to have
something.
Sitting on the train on the way home, I looked down at myself, spotted the subtle little symbol. “Hmmm,” I thought, “Better take that off before I get home.”
Five minutes after walking in the door. Tea was on the table. I sat down to eat, and my mother said... “What does that badge mean?”
I was knackered. I couldn’t be bothered to think up a lie.
“It means I’m a lesbian.”
“Oh, we thought you might be. More potatoes?”
Phew.
My first sexual experience was about a year after I decided I was a lesbian. She was from New York, and grew up in the Bronx; which seemed
so glamorous. She lived in student digs. I pretended my bike had a puncture. Knocked on her door in the middle of the night, claimed myself stranded and unable to get home.
It was her first time, too. We bonded over Winnie The Pooh.
Looking back, I’m amazed at my forwardness. My relationship with Joe, the boyfriend who snored and slept like a starfish, had also started when I knocked on his bedroom door in the middle of the night, naked except for an overcoat. Youth and optimism, eh?
I left home and moved to Manchester, got a job in a women-only vegetarian workers’ co-op, run by lesbians. Amongst them Lisa, who was short and cute and wore big boots. Guess which one I fell in love with?
Because I was so political, I guess it’s not surprising that from the age of 16 to 19, throughout my rampant lesbianism, I found myself hanging around with a lot of radical feminists. I didn’t agree with them about a lot of things. Most basically, I didn’t think men were the enemy. Nor did I ever rule out the possibility of sleeping with them; I just wasn’t interested in pursuing it. But I did pick up on some attitudes that have, to be honest, buggered me up ever since.
I had a fucking brilliant time, don’t get me wrong. When I started out on this road, I was 16. I’d had a shit time trying to negotiate the mess of man-woman interaction. I’m pretty sure that most teenagers have a similarly disastrous time. Call me cynical, but I don’t believe most young men and women are equipped to handle any of it effectively. Well, I bypassed all that. I went for my own sex instead. And whatever romantic drivel is spewed about women being more sensitive and less aggressive than men, my experience is that they’re much easier and nicer to deal with as adolescent sexual partners. And I was surrounded by revolutionary socialists who honestly didn’t give a toss who I was shagging, and did a really good job of looking out for me and supporting whatever the hell I decided to do with my life. If you’re a parent and worrying about your teenage child, never mind tennis and piano lessons. Just pack them off to the nearest SWP meeting, then treat them to a night in your local gay club. Sorted.
So. I moved to Manchester and did all the bonking that young people do, with the added thrill of being frowned upon by society, but with no danger of pregnancy, AIDS, or other STDs. Lesbians are wonderfully promiscuous, you know. Don’t believe all that crap about poetry. And then there’s the sheer
fellowship of being a member of a doubly-oppressed group, and being OUT and PROUD and NOT GOING SHOPPING.
It was great. One day I’ll tell you about
Alma, a fellow novelist and one of the four big loves of my life. It was all great. As long as I was still a lesbian.
But then I started sleeping with the enemy again.
I don’t
think the politics of guilt are as strong now as they were in the separatist heyday of the mid-80s. But I suspect it’s still there. The argument goes like this: If you’re bisexual but in a heterosexual relationship, you’re taking advantage of all the perks afforded to straight people. You can walk down the street holding hands with your lover without even thinking twice. You can introduce them to your parents - hell, you can even introduce them to Great Aunt Hilda if you really want. You don’t need to worry about your children being bullied in school because their parents are perverts. You’ve taken the easy option, and you should feel
guilty about this.
Some extend the concept to “breeders” in general, who should beat themselves daily with a birch twig to atone for the lack of discrimination in their lives. But does anyone argue that a straight Palestinian woman living in a ghetto in the Ghaza strip, in abject poverty and squalor, her children dying through lack of proper healthcare, denied all sorts of rights and privileges simply because she’s Palestinian, does anybody argue that
she should feel guilty because she doesn’t suffer from homophobia? Of course not.
If it’s true that all members of non-oppressed groups are responsible for the oppression of gays, blacks, women, the disabled, etc etc... then only the black Jewish lesbian in a wheelchair has a lily-white soul, and the rest of us should wake every morning wailing at the sun because we are so evil and wrong. No. Don’t feel guilt because you’re not discriminated against. Feel anger because the others
are.
